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Strategy

• Build a new home on a parcel of land
  • Try to buy the perfect parcel
  • Find a cheap home with enough land; rent the home, build the new house on the extra land
  • Convince someone with extra land in the perfect neighborhood to let you buy some of it
• Find a tiny fixer-upper and gut it to make the perfect place
• Buy a tiny home that already exists
• Buy a small lake or mountain parcel for vacation home
• Get plans from Tumbleweed, Ross Chapin, Tiny Texas Homes, etc. Or draw up your own with architect

Elements

1. Porch (part screened in; perhaps for a sleeping porch too)
2. Eat-in kitchen (shotgun style)
3. Living room (square), perhaps with niche, bay window, alcove, or window seat
4. Library (square) (square), with built-in bookshelves and standing desks
5. Bedroom
6. Master bedroom (one with walk-in closet w/W&D)
7. Bathroom w/shower, tub, linen closet, toilet, sink (arrangement should allow person to use shower and another person to use toilet at same time)
8. Utility closet

Minimizing

• Only need 1.5 baths
• Built-in booth could work for dining room table
• Eat-in kitchen or a “farmhouse kitchen”
• Lots of windows, cheerful light woods, and a fireplace to keep things looking nice
• First floor: two main rooms, both horizontal rectangles, and where they join, at the right you have stairs and on the left you have a half-bath
• Second floor: two bedrooms, shared bathroom, office area
• Back screened porch

Why

• No mortgage
• Less maintenance and cleaning
• Closer family
• More travel money
• Can make it hyper-personalized without worrying about resale value
• Can use best materials and appliances available

Kitchen

• Not sure I really need my own pantry
• Prefer a galley shape (not U or L); it’s so open, not feeling that you’re in a corner or blocked in and can’t get out
  • If a galley, could have a long island in the middle (like the three tines of an E in a row), with one wall being floor to ceiling cabinets (along with the fridge being there too)
  • Where the wall is and you don’t have any cabinetry or counters, that’s where a door to the outside might be great: get in lots of light without sacrificing cabinet space with lots of windows
  • We like the idea of the galley being oriented so that you can sweep straight from the front door through to the kitchen and out the back door without having a corner to make. Shotgun style.
  • We don’t need the kitchen to be open to the living room in an obvious way. A “smaller” kitchen is actually better so long as it’s well designed.
• Need to keep Andrew-stove away from Shawna-sink (esp don’t put the dishwasher between stove and sink; keep dishwasher away from sink)
  • Don’t put stove right directly across from sink; they need to be staggered
• Eat-in kitchen to save space (no separate dining room)
  • Built-in benches snug fit around window-filled nook would be best dining room
• Fridge should/could be on an end (not in the middle)
• No huge islands that are hard to clean; a small island only, or better, a farmhouse table if anything